I can point to a number of statistical studies that show that a large number of Westerners claim that their ancestors do continue to exist after death.

No, they believe-in-the-belief that their ancestors continue to exist after death. They rarely, and doubtingly, if ever, generate the concrete expectation that anything they can do puts them in causal contact with the ghosts of their ancestors, such that they would expect to see something different from their ancestors being permanently gone.